School officials glad they no longer have to ask immigrants for documents

FOLEY, Alabama -- Foley Elementary Principal Bill Lawrence said he is relieved that the courts have blocked part of Alabama’s new immigration law that would have required schools to ask enrolling students for copies of their birth certificates.

Press-Register/Bill Starlinghildren walk down one of the halls past a bulletin board at Foley Elementary School Monday, Oct. 3 2011. (Press-Register/Bill Starling)

But still, students continue to trickle out of the school, which as of last week has lost 34 Hispanic students as their families have moved away to avoid the law.

“The withdrawals are slowing down,” he said, as many families are taking a “wait-and-see” approach, trying to get a feel for how the law will be enforced.

Also, Lawrence said, “they’re waiting to get enough money and a plan to move. Others are making attempts to get their visa documents in order. Some are even going back to Mexico and making arrangements to come back with the correct documentation.”

Students came to school crying late last month after a federal judge upheld most of the law — which allows police to detain people suspected as not being U.S. citizens and is considered the toughest in the nation. Teachers hugged the students and wiped away their tears, trying to make them feel safe at school.

Lawrence said, though, that parents were afraid of being separated from their children if they were arrested outside of the school.

After the law was upheld on Sept. 28, local school officials were instructed to ask for the birth certificates or other proof of citizenship from any new enrollee. Lawrence said that didn’t have any effect here, because no new students showed up at his school, which has the largest Hispanic population in the area, at about 20 percent of the students.

Then on Oct. 14, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked two sections of the law. That includes the school requirement and another that immigrants carry proof of lawful residency. Interim state schools Superintendent Larry Craven immediately sent out a memo telling schools that they no longer had to ask for documentation.

Mobile County schools Superintendent Roy Nichols said that’s a relief.

Federal law states that schooling cannot be denied based on immigration status.

“It relieves them from the moral question of whether it’s right or not,” Nichols said. “They knew what their job responsibilities were and would’ve followed them. But they would’ve had that moral conflict.”

The Mobile County school system has lost about three dozen students, with the largest concentration coming from Fonde Elementary on Cottage Hill Roads in west Mobile. There, 10 students have left.

Fonde Principal Katryna Lowery Ellis said she was sad to see these students go. They were honors students, involved in extra-curricular activities. Their parents were active at the school.

Coming from five different families, she said, they have gone to Texas and Tennessee.

“These children had a good repertoire with their teachers. They had made progress and gains. Now, to all of a sudden be uprooted, was not a good experience to say the least,” Ellis said.

The Alabama Department of Education is currently trying to get a count for just how many immigrant students have withdrawn over the last couple of weeks, said spokeswoman Malissa Valdes.

Alabama has about 34,000 Hispanic students statewide. Absenteeism over the last couple of weeks has lingered between 1,200 and 1,500, according to a state report. It peaked at 2,335 on Sept. 29, the day after the law was upheld and at 5,143 on Oct. 12, which is the Mexican holiday Día de la Raza or Day of the Race.

It was the lowest it’s been in weeks, 1,141, on Thursday.

Ellis said her parents didn’t want to withdraw their children from Fonde, “but they felt they had no choice.”

“Even though this law wasn’t supposed to hurt the children, inadvertently, it did,” Ellis said. “In education, you try to keep a stable environment for the children. The last thing you want them to do in the middle of a quarter is to have them uprooted, to have them start somewhere else, learning new school norms and culture, and having to make new friends.”